First Steps

(This was published in my university magazine. I don’t like that my name has been printed there, but then again, who really reads the university magazines?)

First Steps

First steps are the hardest, especially when it’s on a completely new planet; it’s even worse when you’ve never known any kind of real gravity outside the artificial spin systems of the Generation Ship Amun. Me, and a couple hundred others were the first humans, if one can call us that, to ever set foot on another planet in a completely different star system. We might not even be classified as human anymore because we’ve been genetically engineered to sustain ourselves in harsh conditions, and to grow and learn very fast.

We were all born on the same day, the eight of July, and we recently turned eighteen; we don’t look it, though. To anyone else, we’d look like thirty year olds. We’ve spent the last eighteen years learning everything our individual jobs require – me, I’m a scientist, a physicist to be exact; my brother, Caleb, he’s a doctor of medicine; and our sister, she’s set to rule this colony. We’re the first settlers here, and setting foot on this new land is a momentous occasion.

The doors open slowly and the pressurized compartment allows the air to leak in with a soft hiss. All of us stand and look out through the door in amazement and wonder; for all of us, this is the first time we are seeing actual land outside of the pictures and simulations on the ship.

And then, our sister, Helen, makes the first step into the new land, into our brave new world.